I was not going to blog any more about Jesse Helms. But my previous posts got so many people stirred up (see our Comments section) that I can’t help myself.

My critics suggested I was being classless and disrespectful by attacking Helms so quickly after his death.

Actually, I waited four days. He died Friday and I first posted Tuesday.

Then they suggest it’s somehow wrong to criticize a man now that he is dead. Well, I ask them: What Would Jesse Do?

What did he say, I wonder, after Martin Luther King was assassinated?

After reading and viewing the voluminous news coverage, I suspect that in the long run Helms’ impact on North Carolina will be like his long-term impact on WRAL: gone with the wind.

The station that used to be known as Jesse’s station is now known as one of the most innovative and successful stations in the country, with an extraordinarily good news operation.

And the man who runs WRAL now, Jim Goodman, who I assume is still a Republican, is in some ways more liberal than I am. And he puts his money where his heart is.

North Carolina became everything Helms did not want: more progressive, more tolerant and more open to new ideas and new people. While race relations are by no means perfect, they are much better than when Jesse was stirring things up.

One Helms critic summed it up this week: We can now declare that the 19^th Century is officially over in North Carolina.

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